I’ve always loved this song.
Great guitar. Great vocals.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
The Broken Window (2008) is the 8th book in the Lincoln Rhyme series.
As always, Deaver backs up his entertaining stories with great research.
Though the book was published 2008, it parallels what could happen in 2023 as hackers are winning the war against privacy.
… a killer has access to the world’s greatest data miner called Strategic Systems Datacorp. He is using detailed information to commit crimes and blame them on innocents.
Lincoln Rhyme, Amelia Sachs, and characters from the previous books, team up to stop the criminal.
Updated March 2023.
A #CovidGoal was to improve my video editing.
Here’s a summary of my video editing journey. So far.
A secondary goal, to improve photos and start sharing them more. I started an Instagram account for my hiking pics – BestHikeVisuals.
Mostly I’ve been disappointed with the many limitations of Instagram. I’m not at all a fan of that platform. I store my best photos on a paid site ➙ Flickr by Smugmug.
I shoot iPhone photos and video in HDR (High Dynamic Range). The BIG advantage of phone cameras is the black magic used in the automatic setting.
After posting my French Creek tribute, I declared I was GOOD ENOUGH at video editing for my purposes. Approaching “Concious Competent“. I could sit down at a table with a professional video editor and understand 75% of what they were talking about. 😀
The remaining 25% has mostly to do with colour. Skin tone. Complicated stuff. Creators who can afford it often send their own work out to a specialist for colour correction.
Every edit should contribute to the STORY.
I threw this one together quickly as a teaser for upcoming West Coast Trail videos. But in some weird way, it’s evocative of that wild and challenging hike.
I’m particularly happy with the audio.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Mostly my videos are for outdoor recreation, but I also hope to get back indoor soon shooting Gymnastics.
Keeping electronics powered while on the road is one of my bigger problems.
For the iPhones, I’ll use a Anker 20W charger adapter as 20W is quickest.
For the GoPro, I’ll carry at least two 3.85 Volt batteries and a tiny charging case. I find these batteries die too quickly.
I’ll sometimes carry a solar panel in addition to a charging battery (or two).
The Sony is by far my favourite camera. But when it breaks I’m planning to continue using only an Action camera on tripod and iPhone & gimbal. Both are small, light and durable.
The top hiking blogger, Kraig Adams, recently sold his big camera and is using only iPhone and drone.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
I liked the OM 4 — but lost the best piece, the magnetic clamp.
SO … purchased the OM 5. Much better. … But it broke for no reason, within a year.
I tried to send it in on warranty, but somehow DJI bungled my request.
In any case, the OM 6 looked yet another big improvement. So I bought it on Amazon for CAD $215.00.
Most importantly, ACTIVE TRACK actually works all the time on the 6. That wasn’t the case for the 4 or 5.
If you take a lot of video on phone, I recommend it. Personally, I like smooth video, not handheld shake.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Battery life is up to 6 hours. You can recharge in the wild with an external, portable battery.
I haven’t tried the Osmo Mobile SE. Cheaper with fewer features.
Anthony Horowitz is an excellent murder mystery writer.
This one from 2016 is a bit of a sequel to the very popular The Magpie Murders.
Moonflower Murders (2020) finds Susan Ryeland broke, running a small hotel in Crete.
For £10,000 she’s convinced to fly home to England to investigate the disappearance of a woman from another hotel.
Why?
Because there are parallels between how Cecily disappeared and another novel that Ryeland had edited in the past.
It’s a story within a story.
In fact, if you read this book ➙ you read 2 books. The one based on the other.
The second is called …
In the novel Pünd and his new secretary are hired to investigate the murder of Melissa James, a former actress turned wife and hotel owner. As with the case of Frank Parris, there are many potential killers who could have murdered Melissa such as her husband …
Magpie murders was adapted for TV. It must have been successful as now Moonflower Murders will be coming to the small screen in 2023.
I now have 2 dentures.
The upper looks good. And is not all that uncomfortable. It does require some concentration to speak clearly. And I do have to eat … differently.
The bottom is quite uncomfortable. I’m hoping it gets better seated over time. The denturist will make some adjustments in a couple of weeks.
My remaining REAL bottom teeth are in rough shape, as well. I’ll probably have to do something with them in the next couple of years.
One downside with dentures is that you must remove and clean them at night. Put them back in place in the morning.
I do recommend my Denturist Vlad Dumbrava. FutureSmiles, Calgary. Two locations.
Vlad guesstimated the total work at about CAD $3000 — and that Alberta government insurance for Seniors of low income would cover about $2500. That sounded GREAT to me.
He also agreed to rush the top temporary denture so I could travel. And install the other denture on my return to Calgary.
Final ACTUAL cost to me: $648.
I had 5 teeth extracted, as well, in order to make room for the dentures. Those seems to have been 100% covered by my insurance.
Hopefully I can learn to live with dentures. I’m still considering it an experiment.
There are other more expensive options.
One of the most popular tourist destinations in the world.
If you want a great BEACH and wonderful weather, head for the coast.
If you are more interested in Moorish history, head for Granada and Córdoba.
There is some decent hiking in Andalusia, as well.
Watch it on YouTube. Rick Steves’ Europe.
This is the first book I’ve read from Naomi Novik.
Novik’s first novel, His Majesty’s Dragon (Temeraire in the UK) is the first novel in the Temeraire series, an alternate history of the Napoleonic Wars in a “Flintlock Fantasy” world where dragons are abundant and are used in aerial combat. …
The dragons of the story are portrayed as sapient and intelligent, capable of logical thought and human speech. The series centers primarily on events involving Temeraire (the titular dragon) and his handler, Will Laurence. …
I found the story refreshingly different. Historical fiction with dragons that speak perfectly on hatching. They learn language through the shell.
It turns out that Temeraire was to be a gift from the Chinese to Napoleon, his personal mount. But the British captured the egg from a French ship.
I’m not much of a fan of musicals, but one scene I often recall is Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen in Les Misérables (2012).
Complex. Funny.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Deaver books have more twists and turns than any other author.
And he outdoes himself in The Cold Moon, 7th in the Lincoln Rhyme series.
It also introduces CBI agent Kathryn Dance, who would later get her own series of books. She’s one of the nation’s leading experts in interrogation and kinesics—body language.
The brilliant bad guy in this book calls himself the Watchmaker.
This killer’s obsession with time drives him to plan the murders with the precision of fine timepieces, and the victims die prolonged deaths while an eerie clock ticks away their last minutes on earth.
Lincoln Rhyme, Amelia Sachs, and the rest of the crew are tapped to handle the case and stop the Watchmaker and his partner, Vincent Reynolds, a repulsive character with a special interest in the female victims of the killer. …